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Posted: Jul 23, 2014

Satellite galaxies put astronomers in a spin

(Nanowerk News) An international team of researchers, led by astronomers at the Observatoire Astronomique de Strasbourg (CNRS/Université de Strasbourg), has studied 380 galaxies and shown that their small satellite galaxies almost always move in rotating discs. However, such satellite galaxy discs are not predicted by current models of the formation of structures in the Universe. This discovery could cause modelers serious headaches in the years ahead. The results of the study are published in the 31 July 2014 issue of the journal Nature ("Velocity anti-correlation of diametrically opposed galaxy satellites in the low-redshift universe").

The host galaxy and its two satellite galaxies (artist rendering) are observed in the plane of the sky, and the measured speed is the relative speed of the satellites' motion towards and away from the host and the observer (the overall speed is away from us due to the expansion of the Universe). There is a consistent rotational motion of the satellites around their hosts that is not predicted by models. (Image : Marie-Laure Debruyckere)

Now, however, a study carried out in Strasbourg and Sydney based on the Sloan Digital Sky Survey, a survey covering a third of the sky that makes it possible to explore the properties of distant galaxies, has shown that, in 380 galaxies observed, located between 30 and 700 million light years away and having at least two visible satellite galaxies, the small satellite galaxies also appear to orbit around their hosts. The researchers estimate that approximately half the satellite galaxies in the Local Universe must be located in rotating discs in order to agree with their observations.

These findings call into question the predictions of the standard model at galactic scales. This is because, if this phenomenon were linked to the accretion of satellite galaxies along filaments of dark matter in the Universe, it would be necessary to explain why these rotating structures are much thinner than the filaments that gave rise to them, and also why the two brightest satellite galaxies, which are the two that can be seen, systematically always come from the same filament. Alternatively, the discovery may mean that our current models need to be completely revised. Today, everything appears to indicate that the standard model provides a faithful representation of observations at the largest scales of the Universe ("Weak lensing mass map and peak statistics in Canada–France–Hawaii Telescope Stripe 82 survey"), but that, for the moment, we are overlooking something fundamental at smaller scales.

Source: CNRS

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